Mr. Paul Kenny:

I note that some SEAI officials are in the room and will make a presentation to the committee. It would be useful if the Senator asked them about the percentage of the money which has been drawn down and so on. The Senator is right that not everyone is aware of the grants and that there are programmes around free upgrades for people in receipt of fuel allowance. Certainly, we see that they are not very aware in the marketplace. If they were more aware and there was more demand, there might be a request for more funding. One of the major issues I see and hear about all the time is that people will have completed a renovation in their houses and, whether by way of grants or otherwise, installed another fossil-fuel boiler. Awareness of the requirements in the professions among architects and engineers is very poor. As an architect, I am sure Mr. Barry can confirm my view as an engineer that our professions are not at the stage they need to be at, which is a problem. That goes straight on down to the trades, officials in local authority housing and across the supply chain in Ireland.

Climate change has only got into the zeitgeist over the last 18 months.

We need really robust regulation, however, and I would call very strongly for a building regulation that bans fossil fuels in homes. We are in a climate emergency. We have adopted that and that means we need to change what we do. It is not simply a case of the State saying fossil fuels are not a very good thing. The State needs to step in and say that people are not allowed to buy them any more. That might mean challenges in terms of financing but unless we start to put out those market signals, we are going to have the same problems. The builders' providers would be quite happy to sell and people would be quite happy to make them, so we really need to start challenging that, and that is not going to happen unless politicians decide it is not okay. At present, new schools and public buildings are built with fossil fuel boilers across the board and while we need to make a statement, we also need the Government to make a statement because civil servants do not have the ability to decide to spend more money on capital that restricts them to something else. They need the statement to come from the elected Members of Dáil Éireann.